WORDS QUOTES VIII

quotations about words

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


Fair words never hurt the tongue.

GEORGE CHAPMAN

Eastward Ho

Tags: George Chapman


Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

JAMES JOYCE

"The Dead", Dubliners

Tags: James Joyce


Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


The same words
come from each mouth
differently.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"Fifteen Pebbles"


Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


Truly speech has wonderful strength and power, that through a mere word, proceeding out of the mouth of a poor human creature, the devil, that so proud and powerful spirit, should be driven away, shamed and confounded.

MARTIN LUTHER

"Of God's Word", Table Talk

Tags: Martin Luther


Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Philosophical Investigations

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

TAD WILLIAMS

Otherland: City of Golden Shadow

Tags: Tad Williams


With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.

RON WOOD

"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016


In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.

LARRY ROREM

"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017


Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beyond Good and Evil

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


My method is to find a word with a gesture.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

An Evolution in Aphorisms

Tags: Christian Morgenstern


The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908

Tags: Nicholas Murray Butler


How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret.

GASTON BACHELARD

The Poetics of Space

Tags: Gaston Bachelard


Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

The Lunatic Cafe

Tags: Laurell K. Hamilton


A laxity pervades the popular use of words.

CHARLES LAMB

"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb

Tags: Charles Lamb


For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ